Page 156 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 5. Performance and perceptions of silence 143

Since there was relatively stiff competition for the floor, students had to ‘jump
into’ the discussion if they wanted to say something, rather than waiting for the
chance to speak to be offered by the teacher. In this class, Tadashi, the Japanese
student, did not self-select his turns at all.
Let us now turn to the smaller class in Case Study 1 (Curriculum and Ex-
aminations). Here, Tadashi self-selected his turns 22 times, but not as often as the
other students, as we can see in Table 5.10 below.
Although the total number of turns (see Table 5.3 in Section 5.3.1) shows that
Christine took fewer turns than Tadashi, it should be noted that she attended only
40% of the recorded sessions in which Tadashi was present. Moreover, three turns
out of twelve in the bidding category for Tadashi (Table 5.11) were taken during a
one-on-one session with Mr. Fuller, the lecturer, before other students joined the
class, and four turns out of twelve in the same bidding category were taken in the
session in which only Tadashi and Kylie attended. This leaves five turns taken by
Tadashi during the sessions in which more than three students attended. In any
case, the average number of turns taken by Tadashi in the bidding-for-floor situa-
tion is the lowest in the class. In the ‘open floor’ category (Table 5.12), four out of
ten turns were taken during the session in which only Tadashi and Kylie attended.

Table 5.10 Number and length of self-selected turns in Curriculum and Examinations
Participant No. of classes Total number Total turn Average no. of Average turn
included of turns length turns per class length
Tadashi 3 22 47 7.3 2.1
Kylie 3 202 940 67.3 4.7
Tamara 2 111 225 55.5 2.0
Linda 2 37 102 18.5 2.8
Christine 1 11 61 11.0 5.6
Average 31.9 3.4

Table 5.11 Number and length of turns through bidding in Curriculum
and Examinations

Participant No. of classes Total number Total turn Average no. of Average turn
included of turns length turns per class length
Tadashi 3 12 32 4.0 2.7
Kylie 3 138 730 46.0 5.3
Tamara 2 88 191 44.0 2.1
Linda 2 33 95 16.5 2.9
Christine 1 9 57 9.0 6.3
Average 23.9 3.9